Wednesday, August 16, 2017

What’s this all about? The New York Times Magazine
featured photographs of “The Rooms Where Writers Work”—to be more specific,
three writers. No one knows who these writers are. Nobody has ever heard of
these writers.

Why is Camille Bordas’ room so dark? What is
hidden behind those black lacquered Venetian blinds? “I like to reduce.” she
says. “I’m always aiming for a completely bare space in which to work. But then
I tend to accumulate things, books and little trinkets.” As cluttered as her
work space is, there’s no world outside of it. Sleeves of Nicorette, she tells
us, are not as aesthetically pleasing as packs of cigarettes. We worry about
the books on her bookshelf. She wants us to see Lapham’s.

Meanwhile, Javier Zamora writes, “More and more
I’m hearing that there’s a lot of nature in my work.” Who is it who tells
Zamora what’s in Zamora’s own poems?

Danzy Senna covers her window with a white
bed sheet. Her Ikea couch is draped with fur. “Around me” are
“Mother’s Day portraits” drawn by her children. “[A]nd I thought it was funny
because one was significantly browner and had black curly hair and the other
one was pale, so it kind of reflected the duality in my work.” Her children’s
drawings do not reflect the duality in her work.

To be fair, I too am the subject of a New York
Times Magazine feature called “The Rooms Where Writers Work”—though my profile
was published here, on Lori Hettler’s blog. Note that I do not write in any of
the places portrayed; the stairwell is not mine, the “office with no windows”
was demolished last year, and the “more mundane” office is occupied now by Buddha.

[Photo of Camille Bordas by Sean Donnola for The New York Times Magazine.]

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

(Who cares about this? I use Leuchtturm 1917
plain notebooks; but, for a stretch in the late 1990s, my preferred notebook was sold
at The Gap. The clothing store. A ribbed, paperback cover, with glossy, lined
pages. In black, khaki, pale blue, yellow, and red. The pens I used, Bic
rollerballs (I think), inexplicably didn’t smudge. I found the notebooks on remainder—I
remember the price being about $5. When I couldn’t find them anymore, I called
The Gap headquarters to see if maybe they had a box of them somewhere. When
they told me they didn’t, they also told me they couldn’t tell me who
manufactured them—I don’t know why. The Leuchtturm is demonstrably better, but
I do miss The Gap notebooks.

Anyway.)

-->

In a Gap notebook dated 11.8.97 / 2.26.98, is a
series of design ideas I drew for the cover of New Genre no. 1. Ultimately, Mark Osmon
designed the cover, but my design ideas show an interest in the spare aesthetic
direction that first cover took (with the exception of “Nude Genre” (fig. 2)—a much discussed sister
publication that, alas, never came to fruition). (On the same page as “Nude
Genre” is a note I don’t understand: “milk custom, drink shots.” Maybe I was
playing with the phrase “drink custom milk shots”?)

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Initially, when Scott Dwyer requested a story for
his as-of-yet named anthology of “the best writers working in the weird horror
genre,” I declined. We agreed, instead, on an interview for The Plutonian.

And then I changed my mind.

I sent “The Wind, The Dust,” from a sequence of
stories I’m writing for a collection tentatively called Autobiography. (Another
of those stories, “Woods (Marion),” can be read online at Essays &
Fictions.)

A few weeks ago, a proof of Scott’s anthology now called Phantasm/Chimera arrived. It’ll be officially released at Necronomicon next
week.

Reading it, I realize I have lost track of current
horror fiction. I haven’t read a "best of" in many years, or bought a new
collection. I knew just one name in the anthology: Brian Evenson. (Evenson’s
story, “The Hole,” reminds me of the best scenes from his Aliens novel.) Christopher
Slatsky, Jon Padgett, Livia Llewellyn, etc.—are all new to me, though
apparently bright lights in the current horror scene. Clint Smith, too, whose “Fiending
Apophemia” is the best story in the book—a candidate for those best ofs I haven’t
been reading.

If, like me, you’re not attending Necronomicon,
you can get your copy at Create Space.

Nervous about committing 16 bucks? Our
friend Des Lewis is real-time reviewing the anthology. Of mine he wrote, “The
plot did not seem to care whether I was frightened or not, but I was.”[ The image above: a spread from the anthology—two
pages from “The Wind, The Dust,” with my most recent edits. ]